Yes, the Nets have had a terrific offseason, one of the best in the NBA. They retained the face of the franchise, Deron Williams, traded for six-time All-Star Joe Johnson, added some nice depth to their bench in Mirza Teletovic, Reggie Evans and C.J. Watson and re-signed Gerald Wallace, Kris Humphries and Brook Lopez.

But for those fans who already think this is the best team that the Nets’ stars have played on, as several have already tweeted at me, they need to think again.

Sure, that’s true for Brook Lopez, who has been a part of four losing teams since he entered the league. But let’s look at Williams. With the Jazz, Williams played with a tremendous amount of talent, although it was largely overshadowed by the brilliant Lakers, Suns, Spurs and Mavericks teams. Playing alongside the likes of Andrei Kirilenko, Carlos Boozer and Mehmet Okur, the Jazz reached the 2007 Western Conference Finals, where the lost to the eventual champion Spurs, and 2008 Western Conference Semifinals, where they lost to the Lakers.

Then, for those saying that Johnson hasn’t played on a better team need to think back to the 2005 Suns – in my opinion, the best team of the entire Nash-D’Antoni Era in Phoenix. I am one of many people who think that if Johnson himself doesn’t break an orbital bone and miss some of Phoenix’s playoff run – including the first two games of their Western Conference Finals loss to the Spurs, in which they went down 3-0 to start the series – they would have won the title.

That team featured Steve Nash, who was in the process of winning back-to-back MVP awards, fellow All-Stars in Shawn Marion and Amar’e Stoudemire. Johnson was the fourth-best player on that team, which also featured a young Leandro Barbosa coming off the bench.

That also gives little credit to Johnson for revitalizing the Hawks, who had been a moribund franchise for years before he arrived. Yes, he wasn’t able to lift the Hawks to a conference finals, but they advanced into the second round of the playoffs multiple times and had an impressive core between Johnson, Josh Smith and Al Horford.

As for Gerald Wallace? Well, I’ll let Gerald answer that question himself from when I posed it to him a few weeks ago:

“No, I can’t say that,” Wallace said. “I can’t say that. I played with Sacramento my first three years with Chris Webber, Vlade [Divac], Mike Bibby … those guys were in their prime, and those guys made the game look really easy.

“So until we get out on the floor and perform and fulfill our potential and make it happen, I can’t say that this is the best team I’ve been on.”

That last quote is the important one. Do I think this team has the potential to make it to the Eastern Conference Finals? Yes, I do, especially with Derrick Rose likely to be at less than 100 percent until the 2013-14 season.

But this team has to go out on the court and prove that it’s capable of doing that before anyone puts it on the level of the teams that I mentioned above, considering that Williams, Johnson and Wallace all have made the conference finals with teams previously.

The most important thing for the Nets, though, is that they’re entering Brooklyn with this kind of topic being a legitimate one to discuss. Two months ago, it seemed entirely possible that they could move across the Hudson without a star to anchor the team in their new home. Now, they have arguably the best backcourt in the league, have a chance to be one of the elite teams in the Eastern Conference and can stand toe-to-toe with the Knicks in the Battle for New York.